Zombie Eyes

PROLOGUE

Manhattan on a cold April 13, 1992

Simon Albeit Weitzel did not know what he was doing here in the night, standing before the pit opened deep in the earth by Gordon Consolidated Enterprises. He didn't know how he had arrived here. He couldn't recall the traffic lights or buses or trains--none of the particulars--but he did recall the sounds he heard daily, weekly, now stretching into the second month ... the sounds that had cost him his job and his sanity.

The sounds had begun when the old Maramar Hotel had been demolished and the planned Gordon Towers was begun, just after the deepest foundation moorings were dug, far below the former foundations. The noises sounded like straining, muffled voices, the cries of people sometimes. They pleaded with Weitzel for understanding, but the voices were in some strange language he did not know or understand. The cries came from deep within the earth below street level. Either that, or he was indeed mad, and the sounds came only from his addled brain.

Either way, he was drawn here like a somnolent zombie to its lord.

"What in God's name am I doing here?" he asked the empty, mud-packed pit below the towering buildings on either side of him. "What am I doing here again?"

There was some small similarity between the voices and the electrical pulse of Manhattan all around him with its ominous and resounding mmmmmmmm beating into his ears. He had always had a horrible fear of losing his hearing, and now he wondered if he ought not to pierce his own eardrums and force himself into deafness to rid himself of the cursed sound that welled up from below to drown out the city's heartbeat and Weitzel's own.

Weitzel stood just outside the periphery of the construction site, his nerves quivering with anticipation and anger and frustration all at once, a mix that threatened to send his already high blood pressure off the charts. His doctor had told him no more, Weitzel ... No more can you do this thing to Ida ... to yourself ... No more can you go down there and look and look and wait for this thing to happen. It will kill you.

Yet Weitzel was drawn to the construction site like an addict to sense the ommmmmmm of it all, the sounds no one else heard, the voice no one else heard. It was all here, going undetected in the middle of New York City, an ancient wonder that these fools that worked like automatons over the supports of yet another tower to the sky could not sense. Only Simon Weitzel could sense it.

It had begun on March 14 when he was walking past from his job at the travel agency. Like many others on lunch break that dreary day, he had stopped to examine how the work was going at the construction site for what the builders were saying would be the world's tallest building, a twin towers complex of offices and condominiums being built by one of the richest men in the world. Sir Arthur Thomas Gordon III's monstrosity was said to require the deepest set pylons that had ever been sunk into the earth, as it was to be made earthquake-resistant as well as exceedingly tall. At the top Sir Arthur would have a suite that he might come to whenever he was continent-hopping.

Weitzel and others were taken with the sheer, cavernous size of the hole in the earth, in the heart of Manhattan, that these men had dug. It seemed to him that the ugly insult to the island might be the final straw, that something terribly wrong might come of it. It had been just a passing thought, and yet it festered and festered, bringing Weitzel back again and again to stand for hours staring down into the enormous maw the machines had created. He did so by means of little windows cut from the restraining walls of wood and metal that formed an efficient barricade here.

It became an obsession. Weitzel's employer packed him off after tardiness had become absences for days at a time.

His wife hammered at him to stop talking about the hole in the ground, and his children and grandchildren ignored his concern, thinking him odd. Simon began spending more and more time at the construction site, so much so that he became a regular fixture, and he got to know many of the workers. He began to warn them that they must not go any deeper into the earth. They laughed at him.

Then one day Weitzel found a way down into the pit. He didn't know why he climbed the barrier after the workmen came through. It was foolish by day to do so. He didn't get far before he was grabbed and held for the police, who escorted him away. The trouble and embarrassment and expense were almost unbearable for a man who had respected the law all his life and had not before seen the inside of a police station except on TV and in movies.

Weitzel spoke to his doctor about it, confiding for the first time to anyone outside of the family that he heard strange noises coming from the pit.

"It's the sound of the heavy machinery," said Sydney Baen, his doctor and friend of many years.

"No, nothing like mechanical."

"Echoing from off the metal walls, those pile drivers, Simon. Simon--"

"No, no, it is more because--"

"Simon, have you ever lain in bed at night on a perfectly still night after watching a movie on television and you kept hearing voices after the set was turned off? Radio voices, like? Have you ever heard the hum of the house at night, the electrical pulse of the house? This thing with the hole in the ground, Simon, believe me--"

"Goddammit, Sid! It's not outside of me! The sounds I hear, they are inside of me."

"Inside of you?"

"In my head, Sid ... in my head ... And they're trying to tell me something ... a warning, maybe? I don't know. Sometimes I stand there and I think I hear two voices ... one warning me, the other enticing me."

"Warning you of what? Enticing you toward what?"

"I don't know! If I knew..."

There was a long silence between them until Sydney cleared his throat as he considered his words carefully. "Simon, I have a friend who is also a doctor. I would like you to see him."

"A shrink?"

"A psychiatrist, yes."

"You think I'm crazy, Sid?" Both the way that he asked it and the desire behind the question told Sid that Weitzel was sincere. "If I'm going out of my mind, Sid, I want to know, and I want to know what I should do."

"Then you'll see Dr. Marchand?"

"I'll see him, but I got to tell you, I don't have a lot of money."

"For me, Marchand will reduce his rates ... Not to worry."

What Weitzel got from Marchand was the same advice that he had gotten from his wife: stay away from the source of irritation. Stay completely clear of this pit. But here he was, and he was unsure just how he had gotten here, by cab, by train, by foot? He didn't remember leaving the house, and it was pitch-black outside and his watch read 3 a.m. He didn't understand why he was here, but he knew he had been drawn back, just as before, only this time there was no one else around.

Weitzel found the entryway, on his guard for anyone who might be watching the place. There was a trailer some hundred yards off with a light in it, a watchman inside with coffee or cocoa, no doubt, as the air was chill, near brittle. Weitzel ignored the ache in his legs, ignored the unreasonable action he was taking and the cold as he scaled the fence. Some power source had drawn him here from his home in Brooklyn. It was so powerful that it had somehow lodged in his brain and had gotten him up and dressed--had Ida been witness to his leaving?--gotten him across town and was now getting him over a rickety fence covered with Gordon Construction signs that seemed more permanent than the barrier itself. Some power beyond Weitzel's control drew him down into the pit.

Weitzel moved forward feeling he had no choice. Whatever this thing was, he must see it through. No one outside of the fence had been the least help to him. As he moved ever closer to the deepest level of the construction area, Simon Weitzel passed silent machines that stood like sleeping bovines about him; he passed layer after layer, finding it mind-boggling that they'd persisted in digging so far, so deep. Architects must have required the pylons to be fitted at something like six hundred and fifty feet, if not more. Far below the sewer lines and the underground rail lines, and even the tunnels that ran between Manhattan and the mainland.

Weitzel found the blackness closing in all around him, but in the distance he saw what seemed like some strange, green firelight. It was the source, he told himself ... the source of all his months of grief. He heard the ommmmmmm of life here, like the pulsating electricity that would one day run through the building those fools proposed to build over this ... this thing. He heard the voices in his head struggling for dominance.

"Ooooooommmmmmmmm, a-way ... go/no ... here to-stay ... a-way ... commmmmmmm for-ward/away..."

Weitzel did not know anymore what he should or must do, but he did know that there was only one way to get an answer to the mystery plaguing his life. With the will and determination that had characterized his forefathers, Weitzel moved toward the green glow at the very deepest trailing of the tunnel. He passed concrete posts already embedded in the bedrock as he did so.

When he reached the light it had disappeared, sending him into total darkness. He stood, shaking, fearful and trying to ward off the incredible odor with a mere handkerchief when the light reappeared, diffusing all around him and entering him through every pore and fiber of his clothing and his being.

Now in his head he heard laughter, dizzying, bantering and then teasing laughter like that made by a man in the throes of sex. The laughter was in him and it came out through his throat. It was loud and brazen now and Weitzel's body glowed in the cavern like a green lantern, until suddenly something shouted that was not inside him, but outside and coming toward him. It was the watchman who was railing.

"It's you, you old bastard! I've called the cops and this time you're really in trouble! Damned old fool! I ought to shoot you dead for trespass!"

Weitzel's body collapsed before the watchman's eyes, the watchman shining a powerful beam on the old man's form. "Dammit, dammit, no!" But at the same instant, the watchman saw something skitter from the heap that Weitzel had become, rush to the dark corner of the tunnel and begin to burrow like a large rat.

The watchman's light tried to follow the thing but each time it darted out of the light until suddenly it was gone, beneath the earth.

"Damn ... damn. What was that thing?" the watchman asked himself when suddenly he saw that Weitzel was in some distress. He went to the old man, who was groaning, and roughly got him to his feet.

"Come on, you old fool. We've got a date with the cops."

Weitzel said nothing, his blank expression and dead eyes registering nothing. The zombielike appearance in the man's eyes startled the watchman for a moment before he said, "Drunk as a skunk, aren't you?" But smelling no booze, he amended his assessment of Weitzel. "Got into too much Geritol, or bought into some bad coke, huh?"

Weitzel said nothing and only moved along if directed and helped. When together they took a few steps, the watchman realized that he was surrounded by a strange, green fog that was somehow luminous. "What the hell?" he asked himself, letting Weitzel go and only half sensing that the other man sank to the earth. The watchman looked down between his feet at the peculiar two-headed, six-legged rodentlike creature between his legs that seemed to spit forth the green light. The watchman heard this thing talking to him deep within the coils of his brain, saying that in time he would be called upon to act, but for the time being, his power, his energy, was required by the thing between his legs, at his feet. As it ripped its way from the earth, it attached itself to the watchman's leg, and from there it began to drain him, not of blood or bodily fluids, but of his mind.

-1-

Nazlett el-Samman, Egypt, the same day

The working conditions were dismal and filth-ridden, a former stone "hut" of one of the city dwellers that happened to be situated above the dig; it was a place that seemed to have accommodated thousands of years of dust and sand flying through the door, seeping in through the cracks and the tiny, single window. Abraham Hale Stroud and the others on the archeological dig who worked at this terminus of the site had to do so under field lights powered by a generator brought with them. The lights illuminated the work and the stark environment. You could almost see the fleas in the sand that filled the cracks in floor and wall. Then they had the further inconvenience of the slag heap piled in the next room, filling it; shovel porters with rickety, noisy wheelbarrows went in and out all day long making room for more until the find was had.

Dirt and dust had long before taken possession of his lungs, and the marvelous and recent discoveries of Cheops's most secret, most hidden and most treasured of treasures had taken possession of his imagination. But at the moment, Abraham Stroud felt a wave of fatigue flushing through his veins, threatening nausea and dizziness. He'd topple if he didn't get any rest, and it was foolish to push himself to such a state, yet he felt a sense of urgency as if some great power beyond his control might at any moment snatch the prize of these days from him.

The discovery here at the foot of the great pyramids was the most significant find since the opening of Tut's tomb. He was very proud to have played a part in the new archeological endeavor which would dramatically call the world's attention to the Egyptian forebear of Tut, Cheops. Stroud's own fascination with the bevy of skulls fashioned from crystal and other minerals had already led him to make calls worldwide to inform colleagues that there appeared to be proof of a definite link between the Egyptian pyramid builders and those in Central America, as the Central Americans had been, to date, the only ones in possession of the mysterious crystal skulls which some believed to be psychic antennae.

Of course, there remained years of study, painstaking documentation, cataloguing, all the burdens of science, and yet Stroud knew he would not be allowed anywhere near the treasures of Cheops a day longer. So, working with Dr. Allulu Mamdoud and Dr. Ranjana Patel, both of the Cairo Institute for Egyptian Antiquities, and both fine archeologists, Abe Stroud had furiously worked through the last seventy-two hours to finish his abstract on the Crypt of Skulls, an impressive collection of crystal, onyx, gold, silver, balsalt and other minerals fashioned into the likeness of the human skull, an entire room full.

This portion of Cheops's burial chamber had had an instant attraction for Stroud, as the ornate skulls spoke to him. He heard lives--past and present and future--speaking through the skulls, saw life in the iridescent, jeweled eyes of some and in the simplicity of the completely crystal ones, which by all accounts could not possibly exist, either then or now! There was and remained no technology that could create them. Yet, here they were in his hands.

Staring into the depths of such crystal fashioned as a skull, Stroud saw and felt the time of Cheops, whose twenty-three-year reign ended in 2528 b.c. He marveled at the basalt skull, too. Basalt was rare, expensive and one of the most difficult stones to cut, reserved typically for the flooring of temples.

Now here they were, skulls of basalt and crystal ... in Abraham's hands, dug from the grave of Cheops, whose great pyramid was the largest ever built. Where did he get all the skulls? Had he collected them? Had he chosen to be buried with his collection? Was there some reason why?

Burial was an elaborate ritual in his day, to ensure that neither the pharaoh nor Egypt should ever die. The journey to eternity began in the nearby Valley Temple, where the pharaoh's body was taken for ritual purification and a kind of embalming that modern science still could not replicate. For the final rituals, the body was carried up a long, cavernous causeway to a mortuary temple next to the pyramid.

The discovery in March 1990 of Cheops's Valley Temple at the foot of the pyramids in Nazlett el-Samman had confirmed theories about the layout of Giza Plateau. It was here that Cheops, his son and grandson built their three pyramids and monuments.

Nazlett el-Samman lay at the foot of the plateau, facing the Sphinx, and for decades sewage from the village had been thought the chief cause of the Sphinx's deterioration. A U.S.-financed sewage project had been undertaken, closely monitored by Egyptologists because of the proximity of the monuments and the probability of uncovering antiquities.

They were soon unearthing mammoth granite and limestone blocks, flint knives, Roman brick walls and other relics. By the middle of the first month more artifacts and remains were turning up, and finally the main prize--a fifty-nine-foot-long row of basalt rocks. Dr. Mamdoud immediately identified it as the floor of Cheops's Valley Temple, and Dr. Patel gave her instant agreement. Basalt was reserved for royal use as flooring in sacred places.

The Egyptian Antiquities Organization moved in quickly, taking charge, overseeing every detail. By the time that Stroud had become involved, the dig was out of the hands of Mamdoud and Patel, yet they remained for their own reasons and as a go-between with the Americans on site. When one American left abruptly, Dr. Stroud was asked by the University of Chicago Museum of Antiquities if he would care to fill in. He had jumped at the chance, turning down a trip to Russia in the bargain.

Stroud had come on the scene rather late in July and now it was almost nine months he had labored under the close scrutiny of the Egyptians. This alone was enough to drive a man insane, but the way that Dr. Mamdoud and Patel withstood the assaults on their integrity was inspiring, and each in his and her own way kept the prime objective clearly in view at all times. It was harder for an American, Stroud knew, to work under circumstances in which one's expertise was being paid for, but one's advice and motives were constantly called into question. Of course, Egypt had been robbed and plundered by archeologists in the past, and if Egypt had anything, beyond the great monuments of the pharaohs, it was a long memory.

The newly found ruins lay some fifteen feet below street level, and had been partially covered with sewage, which had had to be pumped out and disposed of. The dig had gone slowly, bogged down at first by the sewage and later by red tape, not to mention the fact it was in the center of a thriving Egyptian city in which two earlier digs were going forth for Roman-era artifacts. They had to work in an alley only a few feet from the doorsteps of houses. Archeologists had had to contend with children at play, passing carts and donkeys, as well as angry, suspicious villagers worried that antiquities officials might at any time invoke their legal authority to force them out and begin excavating below their homes.

When Stroud had arrived, one such home had already been confiscated for the purpose, with plans for a second. The stress and pressures these kinds of incidents applied to the dig were nothing like Stroud had ever dealt with in the typical, rural dig he was used to. He had expected tents and desert winds and sand; what he got was an alley reminiscent of the worst in Chicago, where he had once been a policeman for some thirteen years, earning rank as detective before returning to his first love, archeology, gaining his degree from the University of Chicago.

His field laboratory consisted of a Tensor lamp on a wobbly, wooden table that'd been provided him--his desk.

Cheops himself had been removed for "security" reasons long before, as had most of the richest artifacts, each as soon as the archeologists had claimed, cleaned and catalogued it. There might be some truth in the security measures nowadays, because the community was getting rather noisy lately about their rights, and allowing the dead their peace and sanctity. Superstitions also abounded, and often Stroud found symbols written in blood on the door when he entered in the morning.

In the field laboratory where he had labored the entire night, not stopping for so much as a cup of coffee, knowing that his presence in the country was no longer required or needed, Abraham Hale Stroud documented what he could of the final cataloguing of artifacts to come out of perhaps the greatest archeological find of the century. He looked closely again at the ancient relic he slowly turned in his massive hands, cradling the onyx skull of perhaps nine centimeters in diameter and less than that many pounds in weight. The jeweled eyes stared back at him like two flaming embers, the red rubies mocking him with their mystery. The find was by no means the most important to come out of the exhaustive dig at Nazlett el-Samman in Egypt, but for Stroud it held in its curves and smoothness and essential mystery all the world's wonders. It was the reason he was here, living in a strange admixture of dirt and fascination that made him both cough and catch his breath in the same instant.

Both Patel and Mamdoud were nearby, but when Stroud lifted another of the skulls, a beautiful crystal one, he knew they did not see in it what he saw. In fact, he doubted that any two people on earth would see the same thing in the crystal skull, that somehow it radiated back some subconscious core of stored information, perhaps aspirations, perhaps wonders, perhaps a man's fears. It was impossible to say for certain. But now, in the myriad pools of dancing light, Stroud saw a stranger to him, a man standing poised on the brink of an enormous pit that seemed to surround and engulf him. Something else he saw--an iridescent green light rising from the earth to engulf the man. He didn't know who the man was, but he saw him turn around and look out of the crystal into Stroud's eyes, but the man had no eyes and nothing whatever behind the eyes. Stroud sensed that he was some sort of lost soul ... a zombie of some kind. And then beside him stood a second man with the same blank stare and careless eyes. And then they were both gone. It had occurred within the space of an instant.

Stroud didn't know what this represented or what it meant. He only knew he could not write about the event in his scientific journal. But while it was the only time that he had seen two men in this particular skull, it was not the only time that Stroud had seen the face of the first man, a man he somehow knew was named Weitzel. None of it held any particular meaning to him, yet something about the man, the way he stood, the way he moved and the way he looked but did not see; it all cast an overwhelming sense of panic and plague in Stroud's mind--so much so that rather than sleep or eat, he had worked, thinking work would stave off the panic he felt creeping into his being.

The others, particularly the sensitive Dr. Patel, felt his recent change, the obvious no-longer-at-ease stance he had taken. The others believed that he was beginning to worry about the locals, rightly afraid for his life, and likely wondering why he, an American, and a wealthy one at that, should have bothered exiling himself in this way from his homeland.

"Dr. Stroud, you must get some rest," Ranjana said to him, making him look away from the skull and into her jet-black eyes. She was a small woman, middle-aged, always a smile of reassurance on her face. "You must be tired."

There were a few cots at the back, but he could also go to the Hilton on the other side of town where he had kept a room that he had used very little in all his days here.

"Yes, perhaps you're right. I think I will take some time."

"The work will be here when you return, I assure you," agreed Dr. Mamdoud, a lusty, well-built Arab who was lighter-skinned than most Arabs. The Egyptians often treated him rudely, even those in the Antiquities Organization. He had had an American education, and he was considered by the Egyptians as an American since it was Mamdoud who had organized the U.S. financing of the sewage project at the outset. Consequently, the Egyptians didn't trust him much more than they trusted Stroud or other Americans on the project. Mamdoud wore soft-soled oxfords and the coat and tie of a professional, even in the Egyptian heat at noonday. The locals considered him quite mad.

Stroud said at the door, "I'll be back."

Within an hour after arriving at the Hilton, showering and shaving and having a light snack tray sent up, Stroud knew he would not be going back to the dig. His door was knocked on and men with guns stood outside, the Egyptian police. They held him at gunpoint while searching his room, ostensibly for stolen artifacts. Some earlier people working on the dig had made off with a few incidentals, knives, stone pieces, jewels--or so the Egyptians claimed. His sudden departure from the dig had worried someone high up in the Ministry of Antiquities, Stroud supposed. He let them search. And they did so with abandon, angering Stroud, who stalked and shouted at the police when they began to toss things about.

"Come on, take it easy with that!" he yelled when they hurled open a briefcase filled with papers.

"Here, here it is, Captain," shouted one of the young officers to his commander, holding up a small, bejeweled bracelet.

Stroud knew instantly he was being hustled, and that the bracelet had not come from the Cheops burial temple. "All right, so your boss wants me off the dig."

"You are in serious trouble here, Dr. Stroud," said the smiling Egyptian commander, a curl lifting his cheek. "I think very bad trouble for you."

"What is it you want?"

"I think it will save the state some difficulty, Doctor, if you were on the next flight to your country."

"I thought so."

"We will, of course, escort you to the airport." He ordered his men out as Stroud tried to clean up the mess they had made. Then the officer said, "I will give you time to dress and pack your belongings, Dr. Stroud."

"Thank you ever so much."

"Not necessary for thank-you." He was gone, but knocking for Stroud to rush before a few minutes had passed. Stroud packed, attempted to contact Mamdoud or Patel at the site, and failing this, he went with the authorities to the airport. Over the police radio he heard that the field laboratory had been the scene of street violence when police and locals clashed there. There were reports of gunshots and wounded. Stroud silently prayed for Patel and Mamdoud and the beautiful skulls of Cheops.

On the flight that would take him to New York, Stroud leaned back in the chair and fell asleep, the face of a stranger to him, a man named Weitzel, crystallizing in his mind. A face ... just a face ... sad and empty and devoid of all emotion ... just a face ... yet something deep within the mind of the emotionless face, buried but striving to climb to the surface ... a hunger or thirst or longing or all three; a hunger to be destroyed. But this death wish was also opposed by the same source. The dual nature of the longing to live and the longing to die represented a powerful life force. Bizarre, perhaps; perhaps unnatural. Either way, the abject sadness of the little man and the force that kept him alive seemed shrouded in a mystery that Stroud would never unravel, for the impressions and the vision wrought in his brain were fleeting, giving way to oblivion and sleep.

He dreamed of a normal life, a life without the Stroud curse upon it. Like his great-grandfather, Ezeekiel, and his grandfather, Annanias, Abe Stroud possessed an uncontrollable and often annoying precognitive power. Stroud had even seen the terrible event of his parents' deaths in an automobile accident, but not soon enough to alter it. As a child he had seen plane crashes, had even known the number of the flight and the airline before the plane went down. On the occasions when he tried desperately to warn anyone in authority, he was put off, ignored until it was too late.

It was not until his own brush with death much later, as a young man in war, that he truly became a seer, and this was after he had had the steel plate firmly affixed to his skull. The genetic "gift" or "cursed" gene handed down to him from generation to generation had been intensified and honed by the metal in his cranium, and sometimes it seemed to act like a bloody beacon, picking up psychic waves and auras from anyplace on the globe. In Andover, Illinois, the site of his ancestral home, it had sent him a vision of a small boy who had fallen prey to a cannibalistic vampire that the locals had come to regard as the Andover Horror. His psychic antennae had received pictures of slaughter and terror in a small Michigan town where people were being devoured alive by a werewolf that eventually made its way to Chicago. In both instances, Stroud's investigations had uncovered whole colonies of supposedly supernatural creatures, first vampires in Andover and then werewolves in Michigan.

Prior to becoming an archeologist, and prior to taking control of Stroud Manse in Andover, he was an ex-Marine turned policeman in Chicago. It was his near-death experience on a battlefield in Vietnam, the resultant steel plate given him by the V.A., and his ancestry that made his life a "curse." It was as if the metal plate had electromagnetically charged what nature had already given him. Without the plate, he doubted, for instance, whether he could "receive" the voices of his dead grandfather and great-grandfather, as he did on occasion.

When he was a policeman in Chicago, the Tribune and the Sun-Times had begun to refer to him as the "Psychic Detective." He soon grew tired of the freak show treatment he received even from guys in his own precinct.

A big man, broad-shouldered, in good health and shape, he towered over most men, and this, along with the "gift," scared lesser men. The result was that he knew few men whom he could call friends, and he had learned to be suspicious of those who tried too desperately to get close.

His dreams sometimes saw the thin anchoring of pressed alloy that one expert at the V.A. hospital outside Chicago claimed to be causing the pressure inward against the neurological center of the brain. It was the same area known to be most active during REM sleep, and during ESP.

For a time after his part in the war, there at the V.A., he had become a living laboratory to psychic researchers from all over the country, until he became sick and tired of the role they had handed him. Not waiting around for a second botched job on his head, the surgeons anxious to have another go at him, he abruptly left the V.A. center.

Pressure on the brain or no, ill-fit or no, seizures or no, he went on to make it through the police academy a year later. He'd spent thirteen years as a policeman, most of them as a detective. But in all his years as a detective, he had never put together the details of a crime scene so clearly as the picture of a man now nagging and pulling at him, a man named Simon Albert Weitzel. So clear, like high-tech resolution, the details of the man's hangdog expression, the blank stare in his eyes, the green hue to his aura where he stood teetering on the brink of a pit that gaped below him like the mouth of Hades itself. In the pit a black world filled with lost souls, and now Weitzel mechanically turns and leans in toward the maw of darkness when Stroud's hand leaped into his dream and took sudden hold of the man's arm, but it slid through his grasp like vapor, and the ill-conceived dream itself vaporized.

It left him in peace. The image of the man left him in peace. It was what he wanted, to be left in peace. He was tired, and the disturbing dream was unwanted. And the curse he had fallen heir to was also unwanted. And yet to cast it away he must remove his own skull.

His sleep persona told him to focus his mind on the lovely, soothing beauty of the Egyptian artifacts he had helped to uncover and document, and he settled on the image of the crystal skull. A calm peace came over him that nothing, he prayed, could shake.

-2-

Stroud was awakened by the sound of the pilot's voice calling for all passengers to fasten their seat belts, telling everyone of the dismal weather outlook below the blanket of clouds they now skimmed through as they approached Kennedy. A stewardess became solicitous as she passed him, telling him he had slept through dinner.

"I hope you worked right 'round me," he told her.

"Will you be staying over in New York?" she asked, her pert red hair bobbing about an innocent-looking face with huge brown eyes.

"No, I'm going on to Chicago."

"Good ... good, so am I."

"See you on the last leg," he promised.

When they came out of the clouds, Stroud saw a city painted in gray and blue, her streets dappled in slick moisture. Obviously, it had been raining for some time, and the giant that was New York was being irritated now by a steady drizzle, hardly visible in the lack of light filtering through from above her. Above and around them, the underbelly of the clouds reflected the city lights, creating strange shapes in the night sky, shapes that looked like Grecian sculpture.

Stroud was soon watching people pass by and out of the plane, waiting until the place was near empty, as was his habit, before grabbing his carry-on, anxious to get to the rest room where he might shower his tired eyes with water, get a quick shave. He had a two-hour layover, and very little to occupy his time. He'd look for a New York Times, maybe look through the book racks for the latest potboiler by Steve Robertson, his favorite author, whose books always dealt with Chicago cops.

Stroud's mind was filled with ways to keep himself occupied--as he hated a wasted moment--when, coming down the ramp, he realized that he was being met by policemen in uniform. Christ, he wondered, did it have anything to do with the Egyptian incident? He imagined an international ballyhoo over his having been escorted out of the other country.

"Dr. Stroud? Dr. Abraham Stroud?" asked one of the officers.

"I am Stroud, yes. What is it?"

"Would you come with us, sir?"

"To where?" Stroud saw the stewardess he'd spoken to watching the scene, imagining the worst, he supposed.

"There are some people who would like to see you, sir, just outside on the tarmac," he replied, taking him to a window in the ramp. Stroud looked down at the strange entourage of official motorbikes and a limousine. He recognized police brass when he saw it, and this was it, but two men who stood outside the limo, staring up at him from below drenched umbrellas, looked anything but official, and were certainly not like cops he had ever seen before.

"Who are they?"

"C.P. and his aide," said the second cop. "Wants you pronto. Now, can we go?"

"Commissioner of police?"

The commissioner was most certainly inside the limo where it was dry. The two men standing on the tarmac with wet pant legs were dressed in the careless manner of scientists or professors, Stroud thought. One of these men was trying to tie a tie and failing miserably, as if he had either never learned or forgotten how. The other man's pin-striped coat clashed horribly with his brown dungarees.

The cops led Stroud toward their motorbikes and the limousine by going through a service door. One of them announced that his bags were being taken care of. As they approached the limo, the two tacky academician types rushed anxiously forward, each extending a hand to Stroud and telling him they were so glad he could come.

"How did you know I was on the plane?"

"We wired you in Egypt requesting that you come. Didn't you get it?" asked the tall, slender man on Stroud's right.

"No ... no, I left rather abruptly."

One of the two was frail, bony and white-haired, his flesh the color of a lab coat, Stroud thought. He was short but not heavy. The second fellow was tall, perhaps the same age or older, with thin, wispy gray hair and an unkempt mustache, perhaps a bid to make up for the lack of hair on his crown. What hair this one did have on top had been forced in an unnatural wave across the barren area in a hopeless bid to cover the desert. At the nape of his neck, the hair curled in a wild arch and was in need of trimming. The tall fellow tore off his glasses and said, "I am Dr. Samuel Leonard of the American Museum--"

"And I am Wisnewski," said the shorter, wiry little man beside him with a booming voice. "Thank you for coming."

"I honestly had no choice," Stroud was saying when he realized whom he was talking to. "Leonard? Wisnewski? I ... I've read your books--"

"Good!"

"--on Etruscan discoveries."

"Indeed," said Wisnewski. "I am curator of the New York Museum of Antiquities."

"Dr. Arthur T. Wisnewski, I know," said Stroud. "I'm overwhelmed ... So glad to meet you, gentlemen."

"And we, you!" replied Leonard.

Wisnewski begged, "Please call me Wiz ... everyone does."

"But what's this all about? Why're you here? And why the commissioner of police?"

"Well, that will take some explaining, and we have you standing in the rain. Please come with us," said the man calling himself Wiz.

As they approached the waiting vehicle a man in a three-piece suit climbed from it, coming toward them. "Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" he called in a tone that mocked the term. "We can't keep the C.P. waiting forever." The limo's trunk was popped and Stroud's bag put in by the driver, who'd jumped out with the aide.

"I am Lloyd Perkins, Dr. Stroud, the C.P.'s aide. Anything I can get for you while you're in the city--"

"C.P. of the NYPD, that'd be James Nathan, wouldn't it?" Stroud cut him off.

"It would. Now, if you'll join us, Dr. Stroud?"

"Yes, of course, but I'm not sure I can be of any assistance to New York."

"I agree one hundred percent," said the aide, "but who am I?"

"Yes!" shouted Wiz. "Who are you, Mr. Perkins?"

"Well said," added Leonard.

Leonard, Wisnewski and Stroud got into the limo, but when Perkins poked his head in, the huge man who was the commissioner of police of the largest city in the country said, "Lloyd, you'll ride with one of the squad cars. I need a moment alone with these gentlemen."

Perkins looked piqued, but he did as he was told without a word, closing the door on the foursome. James Nathan asked Stroud, "How was your flight, Doctor?"

"Restful, fine."

"How very good. You will need your rest. Would you care for a drink from the bar?"

"I would much rather have some answers."

Nathan laughed lightly, without meaning. "Yes, of course. Dr. Leonard and Dr. Wisnewski will bring you up to date. Suffice it to say that I have had you checked out with the CPD and the commissioner there, and from what I am told no one else may be as qualified to deal with this ... this outbreak as you."

"Outbreak?"

"It's like a curse," said Leonard.

"Remember when King Tut's burial chamber was disturbed and everyone connected with the find died mysteriously after?"

"A curse?" asked Stroud again. "Like that of King Tut's? Here in New York City?"

"We fear so," said Leonard, who fixed himself a bourbon. Leonard's leathery yet white skin made him look ill and weary-worn. "Wiz and I have been up all night with this thing."

"What exactly is this thing?"

"A few months ago construction began on a new building in Manhattan," said Nathan.

"Was to be the biggest building on the face of the earth," added Wiz.

Leonard, shaking his head after a sip on his bourbon, said disparagingly, "Another steel and glass temple glorifying mankind."

"At any rate, the foundation moldings and pylons had to be sunk deeper than anything built in the city before," continued Wiz.

Stroud hadn't heard a word about either the building or the construction or anything that'd come of it, but it stood to reason. "You've made a discovery?" he asked.

"More than a discovery, an incredible find, Stroud," said Wiz, his small eyes glinting with suppressed excitement. "We've found a ship, but not just any ship."

"A buried ship? Beneath Manhattan?"

"Exactly, but also a ship like none that has ever before been found, an Etruscan ship."

Of course, it explained why the two top Etruscan men were involved. "There's never before been an Etruscan ship unearthed. Remarkable, fantastic."

"Not altogether, Stroud," said Leonard shakily.

"This curse you mention?"

He nodded, drank more.

"Tell me more about the curse."

"Protecting the ship, perhaps ... we can't be sure," said Wiz, his round hands circling one another. "Or for some other reason."

"What possible other reason?" asked Leonard. "It must've been a sacred ship, and so--"

"Assumptions, assumptions, Doctor! We must have more than assumptions."

"What else is the purpose of a curse?"

"Gentlemen!" shouted Nathan, bringing some order to the discussion, the limousine well out of the confines of the airport now. "You have not convinced anyone there is a curse, and as for me, I do not wish to be the brunt of political savagery or comedy in the press, so please ... and you, too, Stroud, please watch what you say and how you say it."

"Is the press aware of the situation?"

"Only to the extent that some archeological treasures have been located below the site, and that some mysterious goings-on have occurred at the site."

"What kind of goings-on?" asked Stroud.

"We'll supply you with all the information you need. Seems a guard and an old man stumbled on the thing first and came out the worse for wear," said Nathan.

"The worse for wear?"

"They're hospitalized now in something like a sleep or coma," said Leonard as he twirled what remained in the bottom of his glass, staring at it.

"Like a pair of zombies," said Wiz. "We theorize--and it's only a theory--that when the seal to the crypt in which the ship was encased was broken, something leaked out."

"Leaked?"

"Spores, a germ perhaps," said Leonard. "We can't be sure yet, but we are working on this assumption at least, aren't we, Wiz?"

"It's not uncommon for a sealed crypt to leak deadly gases, germs or spores, no," said Wiz, "and in the end it was ruled a deadly spore that got the Tut people, as we've explained to Nathan here. Of course, we can't rule this possibility out, and I have lab technicians searching for this."

"I presume, then, that all safety precautions have been taken?" asked Stroud.

"Presume away."

"Are you taking me to the site now?"

"I presumed that it would be your first choice. We can show you slides later."

Stroud and Wiz continued their discussion as if the other two men were not present.

"Photos?"

"Photos, yes, and film."

"All the mapping has started?"

"Only at a snail's pace. We haven't many volunteers. The press has played up the 'zombie curse' aspect of the find, and the families of the two men are suing the construction company as though that might help."

"So you're working with a skeleton crew?"

"I tell you, Stroud, even the lab people are fearful of this thing. If it is a bug, any one of us could contract it."

"You seem skeptical that it is a bug."

"I was born skeptical. Force of habit, occupational hazard. How on earth did an Etruscan ship get to America in the first place? Why did it sail here? We know nothing. Only that the ship predates Greek and Roman culture! Was it set adrift with the body of a king inside it? No, for it was deliberately brought here and encased in a crypt of stone below the earth in what would have been, by all accounts, an unknown and unpopulated land. Why? How? Who did the ship belong to? Why were his remains encased here instead of Etruria? Why? This is all we know so far, and so, we know nothing."

Stroud mentally ran the gamut of what he knew of Etruria. The origins of the people known as Etruscans remained obscure. No Etruscan records or literature had ever been found, but no lack of speculation existed about the mysterious race that did battle with Greece and Rome, teaching the peoples of these great cultures the art of war and statesmanship. The speculation on the Etruscans began with ancient records and documents of the Romans and the Greeks that told of a place called Etruria, an ancient place of great power on the Italian peninsula.

"At the time of the Etruscans' greatest power, about the seventh to fifth centuries b.c., Etruria embraced all of Italy from the Alps to the Tiber River," said Wisnewski, as if reading Stroud's thoughts. "Etruria as a name derives from the Latin version of the Greek name Tyrrhenia or Tyrsenia, and the ancient Romans called the stocky, olive-skinned people Tusci."

"Present-day Tuscany," added Leonard.

"Of course archeology has shed some light on the Etruscans from discoveries along the coastal land of Tuscany."

"The first settlements, Vetulonia and Tarquinii, have been dated as ninth century b.c."

"They were eventually overcome by war with Rome."

"Anything new on their religion?" asked Stroud.

"Some of the names of their gods survive, but the exact functions of each remains unknown. Many were adaptations from ancient Mesopotamian countries," replied Leonard.

Wiz cleared his throat and added, "Certain late-Roman writers believed--or tried desperately to believe--that certain of their deities were counterparts to their own, such as Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, by calling attention to Tinis, Uni and Menrva respectively."

"Tinis being Jupiter," said Stroud, nodding. "Uni being Juno, Menrva Minerva."

"Guesswork at best," said Wiz. "Sethlands was Vulcan, Fulflans was Bacchus and Turms was Mercury,"

"Catha was the sun-god, Tiv the god of the moon," added Leonard, on the edge of his seat now, "and Thesan the god of dawn."

"Of course Apollo to them was Aplu, and Venus was Turan," finished Wiz.

"Oh, please, get on with it!" said Commissioner Nathan.

"In any event," continued Wiz, ignoring Nathan, "above these deities resided a group of nameless powers, personifications of Fate, and quite likely the very first chthonian."

"What the hell's a chthonian?" asked Nathan, getting irritated.

Outside the limo the noise of New York's traffic must have been deafening as it squeezed through the seals all around the car, trying to get in. Stroud saw that they were crossing into Manhattan.

Stroud said, "That would be the original chthonian?"

"Yes! Don't you see, the first evil deities of the netherworld and the underworld," said Leonard. "Original evil."

"Primeval evil," quipped Stroud.

"We know that the Etruscans practiced divination; we know they practiced sacrifices to underworld deities; we know they foretold the future from bones cast into a pit; we know they slaughtered animals and sometimes humans to offer up their entrails to such things as wights and lichs."

"Wights? Lichs?" asked Nathan.

"Creatures of the underworld, Commissioner," said Wiz. "At any rate, Stroud, this ship ... this find?"

"Yes?"

"We've only seen the beam of what appears the bow, but the thing is ... well, enormous; two, perhaps three city blocks long, encased in a stone pyramid. The stone has been torn away at the beam, so it's below the earth yet, and it is definitely Etruscan in origin, which means it was sailed across the Atlantic, then was intentionally buried and encased by an army of men. Fantastic ... beyond reckoning."

"And something of a curse," added Leonard. "For one thing, there is no possibility whatever we can raise the thing."

"Not without taking out several city blocks of skycrapers, no!" shouted Nathan. "Out of the question. You have a month before the injunction says you're finished there, and then construction resumes, gentlemen. As for this curse, these two men hospitalized ... well, the reason my office is involved, Stroud, is that ... the number has risen to four."

"Four?" Both Leonard and Wiz stared at the commissioner.

"The two police officers who took them in later came down with something unusual, and are ... wasting away ... their bodies rejecting all food, even intravenous, I'm told."

"Sounds like some sort of a plague organism," said Stroud.

"That's why we've flown in a an investigator from the CDC in Atlanta. You'll meet her at the hospital," said James Nathan. "Now, as for you, Stroud, you're bound to draw a lot of attention, and it goes against my better judgment to draw any more attention to this thing than necessary, but you came highly recommended and Leonard and Wisnewksi here want you on the case. But no one's asked you how you feel about endangering yourself in this manner. Are you certain you are up to it?"

Stroud thought for only a moment and then said, "It would take your entire department to keep me out of it, Commissioner."

"Good luck, then. Here we are."

The limousine pulled to a stop outside a barricade and beyond this was the huge construction site. Stroud, getting from the car, felt a shiver move with the tendrils of a tarantula up his spine. He sensed evil in the air that was being only weakly contained by the light drizzle that had turned the bottom of the construction site into a mud hole.

Dr. Wisnewski called for Stroud to follow him, and the men went into a large white van parked at the scene. Inside they were outfitted with protective wear. The white ensembles, full-face helmets and space boots were a far cry from the Wellington boots Stroud had worn in Egypt. Every precaution was being taken against a germlike virus that might be in the pit, on the mystery ship that had sailed from Etruria somewhere between the seventh and fifth centuries b.c.

Stroud noticed that they had gotten his size right as the technicians helped him into the protective gear. Attached to the suit was an ample oxygen supply and a gauge, as well as a microphone.

"I see you've thought of everything," he said to Dr. Wisnewski. "And I see you know my pants size."

"Of course."

"I suppose you even know my shoe size."

"I know everything about those with whom I work."

"Everything?"

"Dr. Cage has filled me in completely."

"And Leonard?"

"No secrets between us."

Stroud wondered just how frank Cage had been with these men. Had he told them of Stroud's "impairment"? Perhaps if they knew of the steel plate in his head, of the seizures that sometimes overtook him in stressful moments, of the ghosts in his head, perhaps he would not be accompanying them now. "How much does Nathan know?"

"Fucking little, unfortunately, like most politicians."

"About me, I mean?"

"Ditto, Stroud. What he's read in the papers, most likely."

But Nathan had said he'd been in touch with the commissioner in Chicago, a man who had wanted Stroud's help when it suited his needs, but who had turned him out to the dogs the moment those needs were met. He wondered if Nathan was cut of the same cloth.

"Are you ready, Dr. Stroud?" asked Leonard.

"I am as ready as I ever will be."

"Good, then we're about to take the first step on an incredible journey."

"A camera will monitor us," said Wiz, indicating a tiny electronic eye, no larger than a poker chip, attached to the crown of the helmet on his suit.

"Each of us is equipped with this device?"

"Yes, and we'll be sending signals back."

"Are there any inroads to the ship? How far have your men dug?"

"Nothing's been dug, actually. Just a hole between the ship and the encasement. We'll be journeying in, to see what's there."

"Do you think these suits will protect us altogether?"

"If it is a germ, yes. If it is a curse? Who knows?"

-3-

Small burrowing in the sand and dirt about the entranceway was what Stroud noticed first, a bit larger than a gopher's hole, disrupted mounds. He made note of it to Leonard and Wisnewski as they half slid, half walked down into the pit once they'd had to leave the crudely constructed stairwell. From above, Nathan and a host of others looked on, including men in hard hats. One in particular, wearing a suit and tie, appeared to be most important. He and Nathan were in heated debate but out of earshot. Stroud asked Wiz to identify the man.

"Construction boss?"

"The man himself," said Wisnewski. "Gordon--"

"The financer of the project," added Leonard. "Very upset over the delay. Wanted to blast the site, close it over, go around it ... typical."

"Ass-wipe of the highest order, British, you know."

"None of the ill people said anything of significance about this place before slipping into coma?" Stroud asked.

"The old man, Weitzel--"

"His name is Weitzel?" Stroud recalled his strange dream about a man of this name.

"That's right. He'd spoken to his family and co-workers about something in the hole down here that--I don't know--called out to him, kept bringing him back to the site until he became an annoyance. So when he was caught trespassing, the police were called, and that's where Nathan's department got into it."

Leonard spoke to the people above monitoring in the van. "We're at the threshold. Above my head you see what we presume to be the bow of an ancient ship, barely visible, encrusted with mud."

"From the size of the beams, as you see, the size of the ship can easily be estimated," said Wiz.

"It is enormous," agreed Stroud.

"So far as we know there has never been a larger ship discovered, and no one thought it possible such a giant vessel could be made in the fifth century b.c.," continued Leonard, his tall frame barely fitting through the dark opening beside the bow.

Stroud thought the dark, razor's edge of the bow ominous-looking and for a moment he thought he heard a whispered voice in the spirals of his brain telling him to run. He braced himself, however. The other two men continued ahead, their high-powered lights glistening along the body of the enormous craft. Stroud occasionally flashed his own light against the casing of mortar and stone along which they walked. It was covered with green mold and lichens. "Plenty of moisture in here," he commented. "The hull is in remarkable shape for such dampness."

"No doubt the construction that has gone on around it all this decade has caused cracks and fissures throughout the stone casement," said Wiz thoughtfully.

"Careful, both of you," said Leonard at the forefront. "Some tattered boards here; wouldn't want anyone's suit to be ripped."

"No nails," said Wiz, staring at the rotting boards that Leonard had pointed out. "All held together by wooden pegs fashioned as nails. Amazing ... to come so far..."

"I'm afraid this is about as far as we go," said Leonard, a sadness in his voice as he pointed out an area ahead that was impassable where tons of earth had fallen between the casement wall and the ship. "Only way to carry on is to excavate, make some tunnels."

"No time for that. We're going to have to violate the ship," said Wisnewski. "Perhaps here, where the rent has already begun. We loosen enough boards, we'll be inside the hull, and if the planking has held, we may be lucky. We may learn something of this ship before Nathan and Gordon bury it forever."

"Isn't there any other way?" Leonard said, taking Wiz aside. For some time they discussed the situation in heated whispers while Stroud went closer to the ship's hull, which was caked in mud that had somehow filtered down through the cracks and the ages, in the wall that supposedly encased the entire ship, stem to stern, according to Wisnewski.

What kind of a people took a ship this size, sailed in it before the time of Christ to the American continent, sank an enormous hole in the earth and buried it, surrounding it with a stone wall that pyramided over it?

Stroud was shaken and amazed at the enormity of the event which had been lost to the ages. The questions the ship left swimming about his mind were staggering, but they all boiled down to why ... why?

Leonard was still arguing with Wisnewski. "There must be a way to get in without destroying the ship."

"Time, Leonard ... we haven't the luxury ... And what of those poor devils with the curse of this thing feeding on them? Are they any less important than the find itself? We must be practical, for--"

"In the face of this," Leonard said, waving his arm, "you talk of being practical?"

"Stroud, you tell this fool! Tell him what will happen if we don't take the initiative. You've dealt with men like Gordon before, haven't you?"

"Most recently in Egypt, yes."

"Then tell him I'm right. We must go through here now."

"Within the constraints of time we have, that is very sound reasoning, Doctor," said Stroud.

"Agreed, then, Leonard?"

"Yes, we go through here."

"Once on the inside, every precaution must be taken," said Wiz when Stroud said, "Shhh! Did you hear that?"

The other two men stared in his direction.

"Thought I heard something."

Wisnewski immediately asked the people upstairs if they had detected anything on the sensitive monitoring equipment they were using. A voice came back saying, "Yes, a slight vibration. It may be unsafe for you men to be--"

But they were cut off by a tremendous groan that welled up from the earth like a gas pocket trying to blow. It shook the casing wall and the floor on which they stood and it caused the big ship to irk and irk with the sound of a wounded animal until suddenly it stopped as quickly as it had begun. Stroud felt its soniclike vibrations continue inside his head.

"In God's name," said Leonard.

"What was that?" asked Wiz. "Earth tremor?"

Stroud thought he saw something out of the side of his eye, but then it was gone. He feared saying anything about it, and he feared not. "Something just ran along the shadows there," he finally said.

"What? An animal?"

"A rat? I hate rats," said Leonard.

"Not sure ... seemed large for a rat."

"Shall we investigate?"

"Negative," said someone from above. "Tape from Stroud's camera confirms a rat."

"I think I smell a rat," added Leonard.

"We're in need of a few picks," Wiz told the men topside. "Please dress someone properly, send the picks down."

"Are you sure we should proceed if the earth is unstable beneath our feet, Wiz?" asked Stroud.

"Sometimes it takes an act of faith, doesn't it, old boy?"

"Yes, I believe so."

"Time is not on our side, Dr. Stroud."

"Then we go inside."

"Who would have ever guessed it?" said Stroud. "A ship beneath Manhattan, buried here so very long ago."

"Oh, then you haven't seen our tract on the Tyger and other such finds?" asked Leonard.

"No ... no, I'm afraid I did not see it."

"It took many years of painstaking work," he replied, using his nose to try to push his glasses up. This attempt, beneath the face mask that he wore, gave him a comical appearance.

Wisnewski and Leonard were well known for having worked on any number of ships discovered, several out at sea, some abroad. They knew how to bring up the wood, keep it protected. Such work took years upon years, for the wood had to remain in electrically charged fresh water and all the porous interior holes bored by worms and time shot full with a hardening agent, even before reassembly could begin.

"What are you saying, Dr. Leonard? What's this Tyger you speak of?"

"Tell him, Wiz."

"It's not the first ship to be discovered under Manhattan," said Wiz to Stroud. "Not by a long shot."

"There have been others?" Stroud was astounded by this information. They stood just inside the cavernous opening at the bow of the ship, awaiting the materials they'd requested.

"Oh, nothing quite as elaborate as this, of course, but some old ships, yes, dating back to the early 1600s even."

"I see."

"Nothing on this scale, however," emphasized Dr. Leonard, still aghast just looking at the exposed bow.

"Galley ships were discovered by workmen building the Cortlandt Street station on the Interborough Rapid Transit line near the southern tip of the island."

"It was a Dutch ship, the Tyger" Leonard said. "Entirely different construction."

"Records showed that the Tyger burned and sank along the Hudson River coast in 1613."

"Our site here is more like the Dollar Drydock Savings Bank construction," added Leonard. "They'd proposed construction of an office tower at the corner of Broad and Pearl streets--"

"Across from the restored Fraunces Tavern--"

"Where Washington bid farewell to his officers in 1783," Stroud interrupted with a smile behind his protective mask. "I know the area. Site of the city's first two city halls."

"Dutch Stadt Huys," said Wiz.

"1642 to 1697," Leonard fished the dates from his memory.

"And the English Lovelace Tavern, which was pressed into service as the administrative offices between 1670 and 1706," Wiz said, gaining on Leonard.

"At any rate, early Dutch construction techniques involved the use of old ships to create landfill, to extend the land base of the island as they did in Holland. Many of the recent finds have been of ships intentionally sunk to create walls for the landfill."

"Scuttled is the word for it," said Wiz. "A spectacular merchant vessel was unearthed at 175 Water Street in '82. It was carbon-dated to 1745."

"The bow is on exhibit at the Maritime Museum at Newport News, Virginia--"

"But her stern and a portion of the starboard remain buried under Front Street," continued Wiz, "between the intersections of Fletcher and John streets."

"You gentlemen were involved in the excavation?"

"Indeed, we were."

"Analysis of the wood showed that the ship was built from timbers from the Chesapeake Bay area by shipwrights here in the English tradition," said Leonard, a pride exuding through his space suit.

"It was pockmarked by bore worms," added Wiz, "indicating that it had sailed the waters of the West Indies for a considerable time."

"But how did you keep the construction halted long enough to--"

"Fortunately, and only recently, work in the Lower Manhattan area has been conducted under the terms of the 1977 City Environmental Quality Review Act, which we have to keep invoking to poke and prod people with."

"The act requires developers like Gordon to conduct archeological and related environmental studies prior to being issued construction and occupancy permits for their sites," explained Leonard.

"Only problem is Gordon did a half-assed job of it, using amateurs, paying off politicians."

"Where are those damned picks?" Stroud wondered aloud.

"One thing's certain, this here ship is twice, perhaps three times the size of the Tyger" Wiz said, going to the bow and caressing it with a light touch that still caused a layer of the rotting timbers to come away with his gloved hand.

"Careful, Wisnewski!" Leonard scolded his colleague and friend, but Wiz seemed now lost in thought, an eerie, mad look flitting across his face which vanished with the noise of someone's approach, rattling the requested tools.

Along with two picks and shovels were a few sticks of dynamite, which Wiz promptly, and in no uncertain terms, refused and sent back. "We're not here to destroy either ourselves or the integrity of this grand ship," he told the men aboveground while Stroud went to work with a pickax. The claw dug into the spongy, ancient wood like a battering ram against cardboard, and soon the three men were using their gloved hands, setting aside the assault weapons the axes had become. A man-sized hole was necessary and the black maw gaping back at them from the interior of the ship grew larger and larger, looking as if it welcomed swallowing them whole. They had to be certain no splintering pieces could catch on their suits and cause tears. The greatest fear at this point was being contaminated with whatever had plagued the old man named Weitzel, the guard and the two policemen, all of whom were in a state of unconsciousness, languishing in hospital beds.

On their return there would be an irradiation shower to destroy any bacterium or spore that might cling to their bodies. The portable decontamination unit was in position now just below street level.

The three of them stared at the empty well of darkness before them. The hull of the ship, the very bottom, the hold. Stroud wondered if it still contained any of its original cargo, whatever that might be. He wondered if they would find treasures and jewels, but he'd settle for Etruscan pottery, amphorae, tools, artifacts of this sort. Leonard flashed a light into the interior from which emanated a stench so powerful it threatened to send them back. The light strobed over bundles and boxes and barrels ostensibly filled with rotted matter, rotten flax and other grains, rotten fish in salted kegs and something akin to the smoldering odor of rotting flesh that Stroud had come to know during his tour of duty in Vietnam.

"What the hell is that?" asked Leonard, whose eyes darted behind him. "That's no goddamned rat."

"What? What did you see?"

"Same thing Stroud saw, I think ... but it wasn't any rat like I've ever seen. Looked like it had more than four legs."

Stroud went toward the area that Leonard pointed to, but he saw nothing; not until his light brought into focus the footprints, or more appropriately, the claw prints of a rather large centipede. "Look at this, Dr. Wisnewski."

Wisnewski did so.

"What do you suppose could make such a track?"

"Nothing in my experience."

"Leonard? Leonard? Where is he?"

They looked around to find Leonard gone. He had entered the hull alone. Wisnewski hurried through, catching Leonard's silhouette ahead of him in his light while Stroud grabbed the only pickax left. Leonard had taken the other one.

Stroud rushed through, catching up to Wisnewski at the moment his light picked up the fact that Leonard was tearing away at the wall in front of him. It gave way easily and then Leonard's ax came back over his shoulder with a large bone stuck to it moments before the wall caved in in front of the doctor, burying him in human bones, sending up a scream from him.

Stroud and Wiz rushed to his aid, trying to tug him free from the avalanche of bones.

"God damn it!"

"Helllllp!"

The hull echoed with their shouts and at the same instant Stroud saw something leap onto Wisnewski's back. It was hairy and multilegged with enormous eyes that glowed red in the dark, its spindly claws and teeth trying to rend Dr. Wisnewski's suit as if it wished to burrow in. Stroud back-handed the demon and when his gloved hand touched it, it left a searing smoke on the glove. Stroud threw down the ax claw at it immediately, missing as it scurried into the blackness. A second such creature scampered over the bones and came at Leonard's helmeted face. Wiz lifted a femur and knocked the creature hard into the wall of the ship. A third demonic menace was now on Stroud's shoulder, digging in with its teeth for the throat. Stroud grabbed it about the scrawny neck and held it up for the point of the pickax that he rammed into its throat. This caused the thing to go up in a ball of flame that burned nothing but itself, a kind of spontaneous combustion, making Stroud drop it. No blood, no bodily juices, just this: flame that burned out as quickly as it appeared, leaving an ashen outline of the living thing that had attacked him.

"Jesus! Jesus!" Wiz was pulling Leonard free of the heavy bones and skulls covering him.

"You getting this above? Above, are you reading this?" Stroud pleaded without answer. "We've been cut off. We've got to get out of here, Dr. Wisnewski, retreat, now!"

"Better part of valor, yes, quite agreed."

Leonard regained his feet and his composure and they started back the way they'd come. All around them they heard the scratching, ratlike noises of the creatures that had attacked them. Stroud feared they would be defenseless against an army of such creatures, and he feared that the ones that had been brave enough to attack had torn a hole in one or more of their suits, thus exposing them to whatever deadly germ lay down here with the corpses of what must be literally hundreds of ancients.

"What the hell are those things?" Leonard wanted to know.

"Devils of some sort," said Wiz, breathing heavily. "Lesser demons, the pets of a more powerful demon."

"Demons," panted Leonard, "demons protecting an ancient ship, cursing those who dare come near it, and we're inside the damned thing, breaking down walls ... my God."

"Hurry!" Stroud shouted at the porthole, helping the others through as he looked back into the darkness where a thousand pairs of red eyes stared back at him. The eyes were dizzying in their number and movement, as if they were revolving, and behind each pair of eyes was a monkey-rat with six legs and horrid claws and gnashing teeth. Had these demons fed on the men whose bones had somehow come to this end? Who was this sacrificial crew placed aboard a ship sunk in the earth forever, until now?

Stroud, following the other two now, staving off the red eyes that moved on them, saw that Wiz held several of the bones in his hands as he rushed along. Leonard had something in his hand as well, some kind of parchment. Both men had noticeable rents to their protective wear, as did Stroud himself. They'd lost two of the lights and one of the picks inside the strange ship filled with apparitions and demonic creatures.

Just outside, at the tunnel mouth, they agreed to explain away their difficulties inside on the basis of structural collapse. At this point in time, it seemed useless to speak of demonic power emanating from the ship, so powerful that it could affect the human mind. What worried Stroud, however, was the very real possibility that they might all die with the information locked inside them, given the nature of the beast and the fact they had come into contact with it. Would they now become human vegetables like the others? Earlier, rumors had come that even more cases of the rare disease were quickly filling up the hospital beds about the city. If so, they must put down their findings in writing, and quickly.

Yet Stroud felt no illness, no slowing down of his mental faculties. Still, as with Weitzel, it might come on gradually like a creeping disease, slowly taking over his mind. The idea was enough to frighten even Abraham Stroud. "If I become a zombie, please see to it that my life is terminated," he told the other two men as the crowd overhead cheered them on toward the decontamination chamber set up outside the pit.

Wiz and Leonard agreed, only if he'd do the same for them.

The light rain had continued, and for some unaccountable reason it was creating a misty steam about the three men as it made contact with their protective clothing. The fog seemed to be seeping from them, and it smelled rank with sulfur.

Wiz held tightly to the samples of bone he had in his possession, and the bones, too, were smoldering with a weird, unnatural steam rising off the surface. Leonard quickly tucked the parchment he held inside his clothing, trying to protect it from the rain, fearful of it going up in smoke.

They stepped into the decontamination chamber one at a time, as it was no larger than a telephone booth. Wiz went first, hugging his bones. The irradiation shower was quick and painless and a man on the other side awaited with clothing for Dr. Wisnewski, who'd packed his showered protective wear in a disposable box inside the unit. Wiz was talking animatedly, in "high gear" on the other side, when Leonard went through the shower. Stroud was fatigued and thought of a real shower of warm water, while he waited patiently for Leonard; but Leonard didn't come out when the door on the other side opened. Men had to go in and help him out. He was being placed on a stretcher while the terrified Wiz looked on, and while Stroud, taking a deep breath, stepped into the chamber.

Inside, Stroud was instructed to remove the protective wear. There was a cushioned hanger on which to place the suit, and a chute through which it was to be placed after the bombarding rays hit it. Stroud felt like a microwave meal as the machine burned away bacteria on his epidermis, in his hair and pores, leaving a layer of white dust--dead cells--all over his body, along with a tingling, burning feeling. He wiped his white-powdered eyelids with his white-powdered hands. A jolt of unspeakable pain tore through the passages of his brain.

The people who'd been monitoring their progress through the ship, having been cut off as they had, were taking no chances with them, or the items they brought back with them, Leonard's parchment, Wiz's bones and Stroud's pickax--everything had to go through the chamber.

Even the metal in my head, he thought as the radioactivity began to create a ripple fluke through his cranium. He had been terribly worried about Leonard; now he worried about himself. His skull seemed suddenly afire with a bright, blinding light which triggered a total blackout, causing Stroud to fall out of the chamber when it was opened on the other side. Caught by a technician who had been holding his clothing, Stroud looked to have been converted into a wide-eyed zombie.

Wisnewski suddenly snapped, his bone samples flying as he grabbed the pickax that had fallen beside Stroud. Lifting the pick over his head, he was about to bring it down into Stroud's heart--in a blinding rage--when a policeman clubbed him into unconsciousness.

All three of the men who had dared the ghost ship below the earth had succumbed to its curse.

-4-

Sir Arthur Thomas Gordon moved quickly for so heavy a man. He instantly rushed from his limousine to that of Commissioner James Nathan where Nathan contemplated the scene that had exploded in his face. Knighted by the Queen of England, a self-made man after his father had pissed away the family fortune, Gordon didn't like standing down to any man. He'd wheedled his way in close to Nathan, buying off his man Perkins, and Perkins had kept Gordon apprised of Nathan's every move, and in turn Gordon had thought to use it against Nathan when he brought in this charlatan Stroud. Gordon was way past going through channels. He had been on the phone to every public official in the city, including the mayor, and he had been made to stand here and watch this ridiculous affair while the construction of his tower was held up for days. The costs were astronomical.

"Now, Nathan? Now will you bloody well listen to reason? Look at all you've accomplished with this vaudeville act! I hope you're satisfied."

"Shut up, Gordon!"

"Shut up? Shut up?"

"You heard what the fuck I said!"

Camera crews and microphones were jammed in at Sir Arthur as he lit into the commissioner of police. Questions flew from the reporters.

"What're your next plans, Sir Arthur?"

"Has anyone other than Stroud's party offered to go into the pit?"

"Will you blow the place now?"

"Commissioner Nathan? Will the city give in to Sir Arthur's demands at this point?"

"Get these damned reporters back!" shouted the C.P. to his uniformed officers, who moved in, barricading the press even as they snapped pictures of Stroud, Wisnewski and Leonard being carted off to waiting ambulances by men wearing protective gear. Another man entered the decon unit, retrieving the protective wear laid aside by the three archeologists. The tears in the clothing worn by the trio that had gone into the pit were noticeable, and Nathan shouted for this man to hold as he examined the rents. They looked like the work of sharp-toothed animals, shrews or minks.

"What the hell's down there?" Nathan wondered aloud in a whisper to a beat cop his own age, an old friend by the name of Harry Baker. Harry never had what it took to rise in rank, primarily because he was so damned pleased with doing what he was doing that he didn't want any of it ... didn't want the headaches and heartaches of command. Smart move, Nathan had told him many times over. Now Harry looked back at him with a queer, questioning look and said, "Jimmy, what's really going on here?"

"Wish to God I knew, Harry ... wish I knew." Then Nathan ordered the medics out. "Go ahead, get these men to St. Stephen's; see that they get into the hands of a Dr. Cline there. She's with the CDC." Nathan felt energized, standing in the rain in the dark, the street lit with police lights, a barricade thrown up. It was like old times, too, seeing Harry. Nathan felt like a detective again. He'd missed being on a street team and he was sick of having to deal with men like Gordon. And he was sick of the treatment shown him by people around him, kowtowing and bootlicking. Good ol' Harry never knew how. Nice to know some men always stayed the same...

Lloyd Perkins rushed along beside him now with a wide umbrella, trying to cover him. Nathan angrily pushed him aside, saying, "Lloyd, get the shit outa my way."

But then Arthur Gordon stepped into his way, spoiling for a fight, getting right into his face like an angry baseball manager at a Mets game, spittle foaming at the edges of his mouth. "I'm ordering my men in now!"

"You'll do no such thing, Gordon!"

Perkins was in James Nathan's ear, whispering, "Maybe we ought to let Gordon go ... let the bastard hang himself."

"Shut up, Lloyd! Now, you, Gordon, old chap, listen good, because I'm only saying this once--"

"Whom do you think you are speaking to?"

"A royal pain in the ass, asshole, now--"

"Just who do you think you are!"

"I'm the highest ranking officer in New York City! Do you have it straight now? Damn you!"

Gordon was visibly shaking with anger. He was not used to being treated this way. For a moment, he looked as if he might explode.

"You can't talk to me that way!"

"Is that all you can say?" Nathan burst out laughing at the man. "Listen, asshole, your money and influence do not change the fact I am in control here; I give the orders."

"Don't be so sure I can't buy you straight out of a job, mister!"

"Damn you, Gordon, this city and decisions affecting the welfare of the people in it are not up to you, and so help me, if you--or anyone in your employ--goes near that damned hole in the ground--"

"You'll what?"

Nathan grabbed the wealthy Gordon by his coat and doubled him over the wet, black limo. "I'll see that your bloody, limey butt is dragged into a civil court and I'll throw everything I can at you. Do you understand me, Englishman?"

Perkins was tearing at Nathan to release the man and finally Nathan did so. Gordon's workers looked on, a sensation of excitement flooding over them, all of them hoping, it seemed, to see Gordon truly crowned.

Perkins retrieved Gordon's hat from the mud and was handing it to him when Nathan shouted for him to come along. Nathan got into his limo and Perkins got in across from him, shaking his head, unable to meet Nathan's eyes. Nathan shouted for the driver to take him to St. Stephen's Hospital.

The limousine parted the press and the crowd that had gathered as it pulled out.

"Have a drink, Commissioner?" asked Perkins, going for the bar inside the limo.

"No, and you aren't either, Lloyd. You're still a cop, whatever else you've become, and you're on duty."

Perkins gripped the bottle in his hand tighter, and then he put it back. "You sure put Gordon in his place, Commissioner."

"And you, Perkins? Where is your place, Lloyd?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means I saw the way you groveled around Gordon. You're on his payroll, too, aren't you?"

"Now, wait a minute, Commissioner."

"Tell you what, Lloyd, we'll talk about it at a later time ... maybe when this is all over."

St. Stephen's Hospital was in the heart of Manhattan, and besides its central location, it had the finest in modern equipment, technology and trauma care. It had been immediately selected as headquarters for the Centers for Disease Control when they had sent their representative and her team up to analyze the uncommon and unusual nature of the disease that was now throwing more and more New Yorkers into comas. Dr. Kendra Cline had taken her residence at New York's Bellevue, and no greater proving ground for a doctor existed on the face of the earth. She'd done extensive work in cell biology and virology, to the exclusion of anything anyone else might call a social life. At thirty-six, she remained unmarried, had no children and no prospects for either, which disturbed her family and friends far more than it did her. She cared passionately for her work and when she had gotten the position with the CDC in Atlanta, she felt it a dream come true.

She'd been dispatched to many areas to oversee what turned out to be Legionnaires' disease in one case, a virulent new strain of chicken pox in another, and she had done extensive regional studies of the spread of the HIV virus. But this was the first time that she was heading a team, and she was very worried, for what was going on in the city of New York was like nothing she had ever seen in all her experience. She had no idea what her superiors in Atlanta were wondering as they surveyed the daily reports she faxed back to them.

She had sent out blood and serum samples, packed in fail-safe metal containers and loaded on U.S. Air Force jets. She had also readied materials and packing for the first autopsy samples, certain that within hours one or more of her patients would succumb to death.

Now she got word that three more patients were on their way, two in coma and one in shock. She learned that it was the party of archeologists who'd braved going to the site of all the trouble, where the unknown disease seemed to originate from. She had herself tried to gain access to the location but had been denied by the authorities. She had been fighting with them ever since. She needed samples from the area badly, and she didn't mind taking risks to get them; and soon, if her wishes were not complied with, she'd take Tom and Mark, her aides, and they'd get in there by dark of night if need be. But for now she was in the midst of readying her team to gather in the new patients. In only the last four hours, many people had been brought to the hospital and to other hospitals across the city. Whatever this virulent bug was, it was taking a great toll in a short amount of time.

"Have you read about this guy, Stroud?" asked her assistant Mark Williams as they rushed the monitors down to meet the incoming victims.

"Some, yeah."

"One for the books, wouldn't you say?"

"Or National Enquirer, I suspect."

"Still, took some nerve going in there like that, him and those other two men."

"Looks that way."

They arrived at emergency to the ranting and threats of a patient who had leaped off a table and was wielding a scalpel he had gotten hold of, shouting for all the goddamned demons in the place to get away from him. Kendra guessed the madman to be another addict on PCBs or worse, before recognizing him as one of the men she'd seen earlier on a TV screen. He was an archeologist who had gone down into the pit. He was conscious but babbling, quite out of his head, and dangerous.

She saw Commissioner James Nathan in the thick of trying to calm the man he called Dr. Wisnewski. The older man jabbed at Nathan with the scalpel, ripping a long tear in his overcoat, when two uniformed police grabbed Wisnewski and wrestled him to the ground.

"Sacrifice me! They sacrificed me to the demon! The bastards! Bastards all! Get away! Get them away! They're all over me! All over me!"

"Get in here with some goddamned sedation, please!" shouted Nathan.

"No! No sedation!" shouted Kendra. "Get a jacket on him! Render him harmless, but no drugs!"

Mark saw to it, locating and helping fit Dr. Wisnewski for a straitjacket as the man spat and attempted to bite countless times.

Nathan backed off and said to Dr. Cline, "Not the Wisnewski we've come to know and love. This is awful ... tried to kill Stroud at the site with a pickax to the chest ... Fortunately--"

"This is Stroud?" she asked, looking over the huge frame of Abraham Stroud which lay as still as a cadaver on a gurney alongside Dr. Leonard, who was equally silent and ominous. "Not sure I wouldn't prefer to see these other two in Wisnewski's condition, rather than as they are. Getting very tired of seeing strong, healthy men turned to vegetables by this thing."

"Well, Wiz ... Wisnewski is no vegetable, that's for sure."

"I'll want to get an EKG and a CAT scan on Wisnewski, the blood, urine and serum tests, try to ID what it is that's kept him going."

"You got a test for bullheadedness?"

"Afraid not."

"Then you'll probably come up zip."

She frowned, rubbing the back of her neck, exhausted. "You have any idea how our isolation ward is swelling! There's been an acceleration in the number of cases! We've got to check everything, try every avenue--which brings me back to my need for soil, air and water samples from the site. Did you have anyone test for these?"

"Yes, just prior to their going in deep. My aide's taken them upstairs to your people."

"Good. Now perhaps we can begin to find some answers."

"You'd better. Damned few out on the street. As for Wisnewski, he's dangerous, criminally dangerous, attempting to kill Stroud and now me. Acts as if he's seeing things--"

"I noticed the delirium, yes."

"Soon as you're through running your tests, he's out of here to a maximum-security, padded room at Bellevue. I will see that the arrangements are made."

"All right ... if that's how it must be. And thanks for ordering those tests for me."

"That was the easiest thing I've had to do all day."

"Yeah, I saw some of your debate with Gordon on the tube in the lounge."

"Great ... just great. Mayor Leamy'll love me for that."

"Well, again, thanks, and I'll take it from here." She began shouting orders to her people to get the comatose patients in tents and hooked to machines. This done, they began disappearing with Stroud and Leonard down the corridor. Nathan watched Kendra Cline go, thinking the dark-haired woman had a lot of grit, a lot of substance and a lot of beauty. She continued to shout along the corridor, "No time to lose! Up to isolation immediately! And use every precaution, people! Move, move!"

Nathan had a thousand questions for the silent Stroud and Leonard, a thousand questions for the raving Wisnewski ... none of which would be answered, he assumed.

He turned and went back outside to the waiting limousine. Alone, he had that drink, Jack Daniel's neat. He then picked up the phone and punched the code for the mayor's office. Perkins arrived just at that moment and James Nathan kicked out at him as he tried to get in, shouting, "Outside, Lloyd! This is confidential!"

He'd have to take the heat for this one all alone.

"I suppose you've heard the news?" he asked Mayor Bill Leamy.

Leamy, an Irishman and an instinctive politician, was cagey. He asked, "What's the word from the CDC people? Anything?"

"Working as hard as they can, Bill."

"I have to tell you, Jim, from where I sit, you and your archeology friends looked a little like Rocky and Bullwinkle out there today."

"Thanks for that insight, Bill. I'll treasure those remarks till they put me under."

"Why'd you have to get into it with Gordon on camera, Jimmy? That sort of thing only makes it worse."

"Mayor ... Bill, Wisnewski's out of his head with madness, Leonard and Abe Stroud are both gone comatose. How is street dancing with Gordon going to make it any worse?"

"Gordon's got a lot of pull in this town, Jimmy. I've told you that before."

"Lot of pull, Mr. Mayor? Enough to bump me off the playing field?"

"Dammit, Jim, this isn't a game of soccer."

"No, more like Monopoly, isn't it ... sir?"

There was a silence at the mayor's end. "We've got to get Gordon's people back to work. It's a lot of jobs we're talking about here, Jimmy boy."

"Things keep going the way they are, Bill, and for every Gordon employee there'll be a man like Stroud and Leonard vegetating in our goddamned hospitals."

"Please, Jim, you know a comatose man can't vote."

"If anyone can find a way to get him to..."

The mayor laughed heartily at the joke. "Yes, well, Jim, come down here to see me. Gordon's on his way and I've gotten the City Council together for emergency session and my advisers will be here. We'll hash this thing about some more."

"Hash it about some more ... sure."

"Now, don't be taking that attitude, Jim. I don't like Gordan a whit more'n you do, believe me, but Jim, you know how elections are lost over trivial matters like the trains running on time, dire weather that we can't control, and this ... this spreading epidemic is just such an uncontrollable wild card--"

"And it's an election year, I know."

"I go out, Jim, so will you. So, please, spare me the 'high and mighty' routine."

"Yes, sir."

"Bring along Perkins, too."

James Nathan forced himself into silent restraint before replying, "We'll be right along, your honor."

"Aha. That's my boy, Jim ... See you in chambers."

-5-

Abraham Stroud awoke blinking back the pain and stiffness in neck and back, to find himself listening to his own EKG. The machine and he shared an isolation ward in the hospital with two rows of motionless bodies, approximately twenty-six in all, thirteen to a row.

Stroud looked closely at the man on his right. Stiff and cold, the man looked like a cadaver, his color drained. For a moment, Stroud thought he was in a morgue, but the sound of EKGs humming up and down the rows of the zombies forestalled this notion. On his left, he saw the profile of the man he had seen in the silvery crystal skull in Egypt: Simon Albert Weitzel. This gave Stroud a start and he sat bolt upright, finding himself connected by wires and tubes to machines and feeding drips. The IVs looked like plastic bats hanging on each side of him.

A little disoriented, he tried to piece together what had brought him here to lie among the near-dead victims of the thing in the pit.

He'd had a bad reaction to the decontamination unit. The brilliant light colliding with the plate in his head had caused a catatonic response. This had led the others to assume that he had succumbed to the bizarre fate of the others, that he had contracted this vile disease being spread about by the thing on the dead ship.

Stroud's EKG reading was the only one in the room that wasn't damned near a straight line. He now tore away the attachments to the machine, watching the green reading disappear. He snatched himself free of the IVs and threw his legs over the side of the bed, facing Weitzel. He went to the man, the first victim, curious and filled with questions that had no solutions.

"It is you," Stroud said with a raspy, dry throat.

Weitzel lay like a stone, without response. His eyelids were closed. It was that way with all the patients in the room. Some nurse had gone about the silent forms and had placed a gloved hand on the eyelids, forcing them down. Stroud recalled the sensation as if it were happening now to him. Someone had done it for him while he lay in this state as well. Fortunately, for him it wasn't the same exact state.

"What's happened to you, Weitzel? What is happening to you now?"

Weitzel's eyelids flipped open, causing Stroud to back off, but not before the man's left arm had shot up and his hand had wrapped about Stroud's throat, tightening with the power of a vise, cutting off Stroud's air.

Behind a glass, men and women were suddenly up and rushing about, hitting alarms, calling others. Stroud called for help and one of the white-coated men came over an intercom with, "You've just come out of a coma! Try to relax. What're you doing to that other man? Get away from him!"

Weitzel's right hand quaked upward, trying to join with his left to strangle the life from Stroud. Weitzel's body trembled and shook, lifting off the bed, and a strange, eerie, metallic green and blue light discolored the whites of his eyes. His pupils were nowhere to be seen, rolled far back in his head.

Stroud tore the choking hand from his jugular, coughing and shouting for help. A distortion of Weitzel's already corpselike features began to overtake the man's face when a voice came from within Weitzel.

Weitzel's lips were frozen, deathlike, but a voice came like a bubble trapped in the body up and up through him with a start and a rumble, a gurgle and an eruption that sent a brown ugly liquid dripping from his lips along with the preternatural voice. The sound was coming from deep within his chest. It was not Weitzel's voice. Stroud knew this even though he had never known the man, for the voice was far from human in origin. It came from the ship; it came to speak through Weitzel expressly to warn Stroud off. It had the desired effect, for it shook Abraham to his core, and it made the hair all over his body twitch.

"Stay yourself from my wake, Esruad."

"My God," said Stroud, regaining his composure as much as possible. "Who are you?"

"Be gone, Esruad!"

"My name is Stroud."

"Esruad."

"Who are you?"

"Stay you from my wake! Run, Esruad, run!"

"Damn you, what are you?"

"Life is mine."

"Life?"

"Life to feed on."

"Who are you?"

"Life-taker."

"Are you demonic? Are you Satan?"

Its laugh shook through Weitzel like a kettledrum, and from deep within Weitzel it amassed a vile, guttural sound that brought forth a frothy brown liquid that first dripped and then spurted from the body it inhabited. Stroud stepped back an instant before the viper's spittle shot across at him, missing him and staining the floor and the bed sheets Stroud had earlier been on. The brown mucus sent up a stench with the gas it created on hitting the air. It burned an acidic hole in the bed sheets and the tiled floor. It smelled of earth, ancient and deep earth, of bog and swamp and sulfuric acid.

As doctors rushed into the isolation ward in their protective gear, Stroud took hold of Weitzel, causing the fuming, discolored eyes to disappear, shouting at the thing inside him to identify itself. "Who are you, damn you? Who are you?"

Stroud heard only a psychic whisper then: "Everyman ... legions ... armies ... I am everyman."

"Son of a bitch!" Stroud strangled Weitzel.

The doctors tore Stroud from Weitzel. The struggle took Stroud to the floor with a couple of orderlies while some of the others stared in horror at Weitzel. The old man's body rose from the bed, levitating, convulsing before it collapsed onto the covers again and the straight line on the EKG signaled that he was no longer in coma but dead.

"Damn! Damn! Damn!" a female voice shouted from inside one of the space suits. She came to Stroud and shouted, "Just what the hell do you think you were doing?"

"You must've heard the voice? You must've seen--"

"We heard nothing."

"We saw nothing," seconded another of the suits.

"I just held a conversation with something inside here, inside of that man."

"Hallucinating," said one of the doctors. "Not uncommon in people coming out of coma, Dr. Cline."

"Dr. Stroud," she said, "I am Dr. Kendra Cline, Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta. You might be interested to know, sir, that you are the only man to come out of this thing. As for Simon Weitzel, you're welcome to look at the monitor tapes. He never regained consciousness; therefore, you could not have held a conversation with him."

"It wasn't Weitzel I was talking to."

"Are you sufficiently calm, Dr. Stroud, to allow us to release you now?"

"Yes, please let me up."

As Stroud regained his feet, he pointed to the soiled bedcovers and the tobacco-like stain on the floor. "Have your lab people determine the content of that substance, Dr. Cline, and handle it with the greatest care."

"What is it?" asked the second doctor.

"It came out of Weitzel, just before he died. Ectoplasm of some sort."

"You don't really expect us to believe that, do you?" asked Dr. Cline.

Stroud stared through the thick protective glass mask that she wore and into her deep, probing gray eyes. She was a beautiful woman, he thought. "Believe what you wish. I guarantee you one thing, Dr. Cline."

"And that is?"

"You won't have any other explanation for how it got here. Now, I want out of here."

"You don't expect us to let you go without running some tests, Dr. Stroud."

He stared again at her. "Tests? I don't have time to play guinea pig for you, Dr. Cline."

"I can have you restrained, if I must!"

"Really? And how exactly would you do that?"

"With the help of these men."

The orderlies moved in on Stroud again, threateningly. "All right, all right ... a few blood tests, serums, but that's it, and then I'm out of here. I've got to get back to the museum, help Dr. Wisnewski and Dr. Leonard, if we are to beat this ... this thing."

"I'm afraid I have bad news for you regarding Drs. Wisnewski and--"

"No, no!" He wanted not to hear this. "Tell me they are not dead."

"Dr. Leonard is over there," she said, pointing to the last man in the row of thirteen that lay on one side of the spotless ward. "In deep coma, like yourself until now. We can only hope--"

"And Dr. Wisnewski?"

She drew a deep breath, and even through the mask, he could see the concern on her features. "I'm afraid Dr. Wisnewski is under arrest and--"

"Under arrest?"

"Aggravated assault," the male doctor beside him said.

"Wisnewski? That's impossible! That's madness!"

Dr. Cline calmly said, "He attempted to murder you, Doctor, with a pickax. I'm telling you this bug--whatever it is--is--"

He cut her off, going over to Leonard's body and staring down at the poor man. "Where is Wisnewski being held?"

"Bellevue lockup, psychiatric ward."

Stroud drew a deep breath, trying to comprehend the far-reaching effects of their having entered the dangerous archeological site. It must have been filled with the spores of the creature, and the little bastard rat things saw to it the infectious bacteria of the monster got into their protective wear.

"We must know what brought you back, Dr. Stroud, if we are to help the suffering whose number is doubling, tripling each hour!"

"Whoa, hold up ... I am not the answer to your prayers, Dr. Cline."

"That's apparent! But the contagion is spreading, rampant--"

"My God. How long have I been under?"

"Sixteen hours."

"I've got to get out of here."

"We need you here, Doctor."

"No, I'm needed out there and at the dig."

"Are you crazy? You can't go anywhere near there again; at least not until we can determine the medical causes of this epidemic."

"Medical causes ... What if I told you there were no medical causes, Doctor? Suppose the entire episode was beyond human medicine and technology? Suppose I told you it has to do with the supernatural?"

"Then I'd have to say you should be kept longer for observation. This thing drove Wisnewski into madness. Perhaps you have overcome the effects of the coma, but not the madness."

"All right," he said, "run your tests as quickly as possible. Then I'm out of here, and for God's sake, get me out of this death camp, and do what you can for Dr. Leonard."

"Thank you for your cooperation, Dr. Stroud," she said, indicating to the others to ready the next room for Stroud's tests. "Perhaps there is some antibody in your blood which withstands the assault, and if so, Dr. Stroud, we must begin work on isolating this defense and using it as rapidly as possible. Is there anything about your blood or body chemistry, that you know of, that might save us some time?"

"X-ray my head if you like," he said.

"What?"

"The only difference between me and these other men is that part of my skull is metal."

"A steel plate?"

"Yes."

"Vietnam?" she asked.

"Again, you are right, Doctor."

He could tell she wanted to rub her chin to help her thoughts move along, but she couldn't touch the cute thing within the space suit. "And you think the metal somehow protected you? Has some sort of immunity properties?"

"No, I don't know that. All I know is that I have had a history of seizures since the plate was installed. I don't believe it has any immunological qualities with relation to the comas induced in the others."

Stroud did wonder at the back of his mind, however. Perhaps the mixed blessing of the plate had saved him in a roundabout manner. Perhaps the blackout, happening when it did, had had the effect of short-circuiting any hope on the creature's part of putting him into permanent coma as it apparently had with the others.

"You don't sound very convincing, Dr. Stroud."

"I don't believe that the plate itself has any inherently useful properties to combat this thing. However, it's simple enough to test, and you have a room filled with guinea pigs. The plate is made of a simple steel alloy, the sort used in any medical facility for the purpose of bolting a crushed skull together."

"We'll liquefy it and try it in cc's in the bloodstream."

"Whose bloodstream? Dr. Leonard ... start with him," said Stroud.

"It could be dangerous."

"I made Dr. Leonard a promise before this happened. If there's a chance."

"We'll do it."

For the first time since meeting her, he saw her face relax. She was a sharp-minded, strong woman, he decided. New York was lucky to have her.

"In the meantime, we'd like to run extensive tests on your blood and serums, Dr. Stroud, just the same."

"But you'd be pinning your hopes on the wrong man, and wasting valuable time if--"

"Whatever this thing is, Doctor, it's transmitted easily and fast, through touch, through the pores, from victim to victim, and it's spreading across this city like wildfire."

"Then get your lab people to work on that brown gunk that Weitzel spewed up. Find out what properties are--"

"What do you think we can learn from vomit, Dr. Stroud?"

"It's not every day you see a comatose patient's body lift off the bed, is it?" He didn't expect an answer, so he barged on. "Or talk without regaining consciousness."

"I admit there are incongruities here, but when you're dealing with an unknown disease ... perhaps once we isolate the cause, we will be able to explain the ... the..."

"You did see the body levitate, didn't you?"

"Yes," she admitted.

"Good, at least you acknowledge that much."

"Come with me, Dr. Stroud," she said, holding a white-gloved hand to him. "Please."

"On one condition."

"All right."

"That you have someone contact Commissioner James Nathan at once to apprise him of my ... my recovery."

"All right," she replied, and he followed her lead.

Stroud sat through test after test--blood serums, urine, skin, body and CAT scans, the gamut. The entire time he was listening to an inner voice, one that had come to be well known to him by now: his dead grandfather's voice. It came at first like a faraway bird calling to its mate, deep within. It was telling him there was no time to lose.

"All right, you've had your tests and you've found nothing whatever unusual about my blood or my immune system that would be of help to those poor devils in there," he told Dr. Cline when she entered and as he began to pull on a shirt.

She looked at the other doctor in the room and waited for him to leave before she spoke, her full, deep voice filling the room. "So far, Dr. Stroud, there's no evidence that you are carrying any sort of contagion, but all the tests aren't in yet."

"That's what I've been trying to tell you."

"But we're dealing with something totally alien here, a contagion of comas?" Her sparkling gray eyes narrowed, reflecting her confusion.

"Finally," he said with a smile.

"What?" she asked.

"We agree on something."

She nodded, looking at him as if for the first time. "I've read about you, Dr. Stroud."

"Nothing flattering, I'm sure."

"On the contrary. At any rate, won't you consider staying a little longer so that we can--"

He was shaking his head before she had time to finish. "I'm done playing pincushion to your people, Dr. Cline."

"But, Stroud."

He pushed past her, going for the door. "I've done my part for you, and it's been only a waste of time for the both of us. I've got to get to Dr. Wisnewski."

She stopped him at the door. "Please come to my office and let us talk, Dr. Stroud."

"About what?"

"About Dr. Wisnewski, for one thing."

She walked out ahead of him and together they went down the hall to the office that had been given over for her use. She asked him to sit down. He declined, remaining on his feet. She sat behind her desk, breathed deeply and looked tired.

"There has been no sign of this epidemic slowing, Stroud."